The sound of clanging metal is heard throughout the room, but this isn’t a movie set–this is West Side’s Fencing Club. The club started in 2003 at Jeff and moved to West Side when the sponsor, Mr. Levy, began teaching here in 2006. It aims to give students the opportunity to learn and compete in the art of fencing.

The sport consists of three kinds of fighting: epee, foil, and sabre. In epee fighting the competitors aim for any place on their rivals body and must hit the person with the point of their sword. While fighting foil, the fencers aim for the torso, and like epee, a person gains a point when they hit the other with the tip of the sword. Sabre, unlike epee and foil, allows for slashing points, so the fencer can hit the other with the side of their sword and gain a point.

Most of the members of the club fence epee, but two new members, freshmen Sara Johnson and Nikita Prabhakar have been fencing foil for three years. They started fencing at River City Fencing, a citywide club that meets at Morton Center. The West Side club also competes against River City in some of their tournaments.

 Fencing is considered a sport nationally, but is not a school sport. The reason for this is that West Side is alone in having a fencing club (though the club was started at Jeff, it was not continued after Mr. Levy left). “We mostly fence at open events, which include all ages,” Mr. Levy says. Most of the students don’t mind though. According to senior member Alex Miloshevsky, “It’s a lot more flexible.” Since they only meet on Thursdays, it’s a lot less time consuming than the school-sponsored sports at West Side.